


I Need You So Much Closer

by OrchardsinSnow



Series: Closer Series [1]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Eliot’s song about heartbreak has made him rich and he’s vowed never to perform it again, Friends to Lovers, Friends to lovers to exes to lovers again, I mean eventually, M/M, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Queliot Week 2019, Reunion Sex, Todd? Who?, famous eliot, not famous quentin, obviously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-05-18 12:40:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19334713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrchardsinSnow/pseuds/OrchardsinSnow
Summary: Eliot’s life looks like a dream: he’s a wildly successful musician, touring the world with his brilliant bandmate and BFF Margo. Eliot’s secret: the last time he was truly happy, he was surviving on instant ramen and store-brand peanut butter in a ramshackle rented house with a man who, in retrospect, was the love of his life. You live and you learn. He’s made peace with it. Until, one day, Margo routes their tour through a city on the other side of the ocean—the city where Quentin lives.Totally AU, no magic at all unless you consider music, sex, and love to be magic. And I hope you like Eliot spending time in his feelings.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Eliot is an addict in recovery in this story—an AU alternative to monster possession, I guess. It’s part of his life and some of his worst days are revisited in recaps/flashbacks, but this is not a story about relapse or anything like that.

Eliot picks up his phone again. He types out a text again, then deletes it before sending. Again.

 _Whatever,_ he thinks. _Is this even still a good number?_

He sets the phone down on the upholstered bench of the tour bus and picks up his acoustic guitar. It’s morning here, the day is getting brighter, but his body thinks it’s bedtime. He’s never been able to sleep on a redeye flight, and the transatlantic ones feel the worst for some reason.

It had been Margo’s idea to sneak in a secret gig here in Glasgow, of all places, before the madness of Glastonbury and the rest of the summer-long Europe tour. Margo is the other half of Sorrow and Sorrow. The drumming half. Todd, their bassist and occasional keyboardist, doesn’t factor into the halves, somehow.

“A café date,” Margo had said. “Acoustic. It’ll be a perfect warm-up and we can do, like, whisper publicity only. Play under a fake name, even.”

She’d been ready with all the right arguments when she’d suggested this plan to the management team, who suspected nothing. She’d still given Eliot a pointed look, just in case her intentions were unclear. She knew who lived in that part of Scotland. She wanted Eliot to know she knew. Eliot had shrugged and played dumb. “Sure. Good plan,” he’d said.

Later, in private, he’d taken her small hand in his and massaged the parts he knew were perpetually one sick drum solo away from a vicious cramp. “Bambi,” he’d said. “Give me a little credit. If you hadn’t suggested it, I would have.” And that was the truth, too.

And now, here he is. He strums the guitar absently, staring out the bus window at the scenery crawling by. The hills are as green as everyone says, he thinks. Other than that, Glasgow looks like any other mid-sized industrial town. At least that’s true of this road from the airport. He supposes there’s something else magical about the place that would keep a person here for . . . what has it been? Seven years? As long as that.

“Hey, Eliot,” Margo says. “Did you just invent a new chord? Play that again, I really think you’re doing something genius.”

“What? I—” He stares at his own hands, amazed. Without altering his fingering, he strums. His ears confirm what his brain is fuzzily trying to tell him. “Um. I’m just playing G major.”

“Yes, I know, dumbass. You’ve been playing it repetitively for five minutes straight. I’m sure your beginning guitar teacher from when you were nine years old is very impressed.” Eliot turns to face Margo’s annoyed rant and is met with a pillow to the teeth.

“Pth. Margo! You don’t know where this has been.” He picks fibers from his tongue. It’s a fuzzy pillow, with wooly strands spiraling out like the pillow has a perm.

“It’s my personal pillow and I know exactly where it’s been. Not that that makes things any better.” She cackles, leaning down and smacking her lips to his, which is a thing they do that means _love you, don’t test me_. She takes the pillow and makes her way to her room at the back of the tour bus, shouting over her shoulder, “Don’t you wimp out on me. Get on that goddamn phone.”

While Margo is still within earshot, Eliot picks out a delicate, intricate melody on the guitar, something haunting and soulful. It’s an apology for having bored her, but he’s also showing off—because he can, and because it feels good to remind himself who he is. He sets down the guitar and reaches for his phone, resolved. A grown-up. A person who knows how to communicate.

He sees a text is waiting for him. _Yes this is still my number,_ the text says.

He smiles. He’s jet-lagged, wound up, feeling slap-happy as it dawns on him that half the battle is won, he can let go of the worst-case scenario where Quentin refuses to even talk. Eliot texts a reply. _Are you psychic now?_

 _The bubbles._ Eliot smiles more. The ellipses when someone is drafting a text—Quentin Coldwater, PhD, still calls them _bubbles_. And Eliot knows you have to be looking at a person’s last text to see them, these bubbles. His heart thuds once.

Those last texts, though. He knows them all too well, because he’s been looking at them himself. Quentin to him: _You’ve made yourself clear and I’ll respect your wishes._ _I just need to know you’re safe._ His own reply: _I’ll be okay._ The worst lie he’s ever told, even if he was too out of his mind to even know he was lying at the time.

Before he can overthink it, Eliot taps the symbol for an audio call. So smart, this smart phone. It knows when to leave out the country code and everything.

“Hey.” Quentin’s voice. The word stretches for an extra half-syllable, which means Quentin is nervous, but not _too_ nervous. And he _sounds_ closer somehow. There’s less of that robotic echo that always made Eliot think of transatlantic underwater cables, so vulnerable to sharks. Not that his memories of those calls are at all reliable. The signals probably all go through satellites by now, he thinks. More sky than ocean.

“Hey, you.” Warm. Casual. That’s the intent, anyhow. He hears Quentin clear his throat. Eliot realizes he’s been listening, in the pause, for something in the background. Someone. But it’s the middle of the morning. Quentin is probably at his office or in a musty archive or wherever it is assistant professors of literature go on Thursdays. Probably not his classroom, since he’s answering his phone.

They both speak at once. Eliot says _Is this a good time?_ on top of Quentin saying _It’s nice to hear your voice,_ and then Eliot lurches onward, his addled brain slow on the uptake. “So, I’m in the UK for a festival and, uh, we threw together a kind of stealth gig here. In Glasgow. Under the radar, just for fun. It’s tomorrow night.” With his free hand, Eliot pulls his guitar onto his lap and runs the pads of his fingers along the strings, silently. It calms him.

“Yeah?”

“I was hoping—I’ll leave a pair of tickets for you at the door. In case you’re free.” Eliot swallows. Moment of truth. “I’d like to see you.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

Eliot closes his eyes. Moment of truth, indeed. “I mean. Oh. That’s all right. I should have gotten in touch sooner, I—”

“Eliot. I’m all set. I went online the minute tickets went on sale.”

Eliot hears his own name and that amused lift in Quentin’s voice, and he free-falls into the thousands of times he’s heard that precise combo. He rubs his chest. “Ha. You cracked the code, huh.”

“You’re playing as _Emerson’s Alloy_. That’s a pretty specific reference only about eight people would recognize.” An inside joke from the house they all shared right after college.

Eliot is standing now, inexplicably doing lunges with one foot on the upholstered bench. If he reaches his free hand up, he can touch the ceiling of the bus, which is now winding its way down a city street, and he keeps his balance this way. “I’m impressed you keep up with the listings.”

“You know, I’ll probably get kicked out of the club for revealing this, but when you get married, they don’t actually amputate your personality.”

Eliot lets that sit for a moment, legitimately shocked. He lets his arm fall down from the ceiling. Quentin being married is a thing he’s used to, sure. But now he thinks: _You’re not just married to a woman—you’re straight. That’s how straight people banter about marriage._ And it’s a betrayal to think such a thing, Eliot doesn’t really mean it, and yet.

Then he knows he’s paused for too long, and he tries feebly to salvage the conversation.

“I—hah—” The bus lurches, and he drops down heavily on the bench.

“Shit, that was a stupid attempt at a joke,” Quentin says. “I wasn’t—I didn’t—”

“No, I get it. You’re married. I’m not. Despite the fact that that particular club relaxed its standards, oh, four whole years ago. Five, in this country.” Okay, maybe that isn’t making nice, he thinks, but—fucking hell. He’s surprised how hurt he feels.

But Quentin keeps walking it back. “You’re absolutely right and I’m an ass. It’s smug, heteronormative horseshit. I don’t know why I said that, I’ve never talked that way in my life. I’m sorry.” He doesn’t waver and he doesn’t stammer, and Eliot remembers: Quentin doesn’t argue like other people. He admits when he’s wrong (who ever even heard of such a thing?), and when he’s _not_ wrong, you know it. It was one of Eliot’s favorite things. Maybe it still is.

Eliot takes a breath. “God, Q. That just—scared me for a minute, okay? That didn’t sound like you.”

“Didn’t it? Putting my foot in it is my signature move.”

Something small bursts inside Eliot’s chest. This disastrous nerd. “I’m just happy I’ll get to see you. I’m looking forward to hearing all about what’s going on with you, including your firsthand experience with the tantalizing ritualized blending of private property.”

“Yeah, well. We have a lot to catch up on. We can hash it out over. You know.” Meaning: a drink, if you must.

“We’ll hash it out over seltzer water.” Meaning: not the type of drink you remember me (I’m sorry) enjoying overly well (really sorry).

“Oh?” Meaning: are you fucking goddamn serious, the thing I waited wished begged hoped prayed smashed our life to pieces over, that thing? You did the thing?

“Yeah. Four years.” Four years, two months, one week, and five days. (Wish it was seven years. Really sorry.)

“Eliot,” Quentin says, “Good for you.” His voice is half whisper, half broken gasp. Eliot knows to take encouragement when it’s offered, whether or not he feels he needs it, and this reaction from Quentin is a thing he wishes he could wrap his arms around and squeeze until it’s inside his heart, a nugget of diamond.

“Thanks,” he says. Meaning: something infinite that can’t be said in words. He reaches for his instrument again, practically petting it.

“Should I come beforehand, or will you be pacing nervously in your do-not-disturb isolation chamber?”

Eliot laughs lightly. “Well, more like sound check and some secret band rituals. But it’s an early show, and I’m all yours after.”

“I was counting on it.”

“Okay, then,” he says. “Okay.”

He’s about to hang up when Quentin blurts out, “What about tonight? Are you free for dinner?” 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, backstory! So much past perfect tense, ugh, haha. There’s some sad stuff here, but this is as bad as it gets, I promise. In case it isn’t clear from context, the meeting Eliot goes to (which happens “off screen”) is an AA meeting.

Eliot crawls into Margo’s bed at the back of the bus, folds himself around her like a rag doll. His boots are still on, and she hates that, but he keeps his feet dangling off the end of the bed and bargains that someone will be changing these sheets soon anyhow. Her hair smells like coconut and, very faintly, patchouli. He sighs. He’d been enjoying glimpses of Glasgow’s more interesting neighborhoods, but then the bus had begun a serious of tedious maneuvers turning onto an impossibly narrow road and he’d started to feel queasy. His nerves are shot.

Margo twists to face him. He loves that she never leaps into making him talk right away. She weaves their hands together and looks into his eyes, fierce and steady, until he imagines his feelings are water pouring from his eyes into hers, like a pitcher filling a glass. He giggles, because what even. The image. She makes a puzzled face. “You need sleep, babe.” And: “You called him, didn’t you? I’m proud of you.”

“He’s coming to the show tomorrow. He had his own ticket. Or tickets.” He frowns. “He might be bringing Poppy. I forgot to ask him.”

Margo narrows her eyes and sets her jaw. “I can make nice with wifey. You’re gonna get your quality time, don’t worry.” She nestles herself into his chest and he rolls onto his back, tugging her along with him, and addresses the rest of his comments to the ceiling.

“So, he’s coming to the show tomorrow, and he’s meeting me for dinner tonight.”

She hums. “You _are_ gonna get your quality time.”

“He’s being a good host. Showing me his hometown.”

“Okay,” she says. Meaning: Sure, let’s go with that.

“I told him I’m sober. It just came up.” He says this like he’s talking about the weather, which is how he says things that have crushing importance to him. It’s either a flat matter-of-fact account or a song that will break the internet. There’s no grey area in between, for him. Maybe he’ll write a song about this. One day.

Margo is silent now, stroking his cheek. She might be remembering his rock bottom, and the weeks and months that came after rock bottom. The toughest months. She hadn’t left his side. He hadn’t given her much choice—he’d refused to allow anyone else the chance. He can feel her ribcage expanding and contracting gently with slow, steady breaths, and he feels a rush of grateful love for her, a thing he feels two or three times every week.

“I really hate that you had to do it without him,” she says. “But I also think maybe that was the only way you _could_ do it.”

“Maybe so,” he says. After a beat: “I hope this isn’t all a terrible mistake.”

Twenty minutes later, the bus is dropping them off at their hotel. A bellhop is at the door to the bus and the concierge hovers with key cards. Eliot nudges Margo up—they don’t sleep on the bus when hotels are an option, not anymore—then pulls a knit cap over his jet-black curls, applies a shield of dark sunglasses to his face, and propels the both of them off the bus and across the narrow slate sidewalk. He almost trips over a person tying his shoes in the hotel vestibule. “Sorry, Todd,” he says.

Staying incognito is not exactly realistic, given the fact that he’s six foot four in these boots, accompanied by his ravishing other half in her swirl of scarves and aura like the sun, and carrying his rare Martin guitar—gorgeous mahogany and impeccable 1930’s craftsmanship nakedly on display—by its neck through the hotel lobby. At least Glasgow doesn’t seem like a paparazzi sort of place. A few heads turn his way.

He dips his ecofriendly travel bottle into a shallow pool of cucumber water in the hotel lobby, considers that it might actually be a decorative display, downs the water in thirsty gulps regardless, and refills his bottle. Upstairs, he pecks Margo on the cheek, keys himself into his suite, draws the blackout curtains, and throws the patterned bedspread to the floor (because even in high-end hotels, he's never seen a bedspread in the laundry cart). He peels off everything he’s wearing and flops onto the crisp white sheets of the bed for a three-hour nap.

When his alarm wakes him up, he sees that his bags have been deposited in his room and a plate of sliced-up fruit and buttery pastries has been placed on a side table. He raps gently on the door that joins Margo’s suite to his, on the remote chance she’s awake, but there’s no response. He stands for a moment in front of the blackout curtains, still easing into wakefulness, naked and not quite ready to let in the light of day, and recalls his dreams.

The simple dreams, the ones that feature the weight of Quentin’s head on his chest, for example, are the hardest. The sun in Quentin’s golden-flecked hair, the way Quentin’s hair splays across his own black chest hair. Lines from the sheets marking Quentin’s forearms, his skin caramel from doing landscaping jobs all summer. Eliot rubs his sternum. There’s a feeling of satisfaction still in his body, thick as honey, a by-product of the dream. He knows it won’t last. At least it wasn’t a sex dream, he thinks. Those had made a comeback late in his first year of sobriety, but they’d faded away, finally. He takes a deep breath, finds the shower and turns the knobs as high as they’ll go. While he waits for the hot water, he searches on his phone for a meeting he can walk to.

#

It had started the way things sometimes do: slowly, and then suddenly.

There had always been something between them, ever since freshman year. Private fantasies on Eliot’s part, and blatant smoldering looks, and then responsive little grins from Quentin that went on a beat longer than necessary. And then in an instant the years of gentle flirting had tipped over into something different. A typical evening in October, in the shabby fire trap of a rental house in Queens they all shared when they were just out of college. The landlord had called it a _cottage_ in the ad, which had made them all laugh hysterically once he was out of earshot, deposit check in hand. The eight of them had divvied up the three bedrooms, den, and unfinished attic, drawing straws for who would get their own room and who would share. Eliot wound up rooming with Margo in the attic. Quentin drew the tiny den, with nothing but a cheap fold-out screen for privacy, but it was his alone. The three bedrooms went to Julia and Kady (a couple), Josh and Penny (not a couple), and Alice. No one was quite sure where Todd lived, but he seemed to be around a lot.

Common space was the basement band room, sun-lit kitchen, and a cozy living room stuffed with three hand-me-down couches, some bookshelves, and a small monitor with a tangle of cords attached where they streamed movies and TV. It wasn’t much, but it was what they could afford on what they scraped together from part-time jobs and gigs and the occasional creative hustle.

Eliot found Quentin in the living room one night, alone, eating something out of a bowl with chopsticks. The light from the monitor flickered across his face, tinting his skin blue, and when Quentin smiled at him Eliot felt his ever-present simmering attraction surge into something more like desire. There was something in Quentin’s eyes that dragged it out of him.

“What pitiful excuse for a meal are you eating?” He’d eased himself down onto the sagging sofa and Quentin’s body had tipped toward him. The bowl smelled like peanuts and red bell peppers. Not bad.

“Okay, it’ll sound weird to hear me describe it but it’s actually, like, a recipe and it resembles sort of an Indonesian flavor profile.”

“Hence the chopsticks.”

“Um. I guess they do use chopsticks for noodles in Indonesia, which this qualifies as, but you can also make it with rice. I’m using chopsticks because Alice took all the forks for some sort of work picnic.”

“ _All_ of them?”

Quentin rolled his eyes. “Even the plastic take-out ones.”

“Ugh.” Eliot sat down on the couch next to Quentin. Alice was a bit extra. “So, this recipe?”

“Diced sweet peppers stir fried with garlic and chili powder, mixed with peanut butter and ramen noodles.”     

Eliot winced, doubtful.

Quentin shrugged. “I like it. It’s just, I don’t know, chewy and crunchy. A bit salty. See, you have to taste it to understand. Um. This is the only pair of chopsticks, so.”

And then Quentin was lifting a bite of dangling noodles for Eliot to taste, _feeding_ Eliot, balancing the chopsticks just so, and as Eliot opened his mouth to accept it, he knew the next thing he would do would be to kiss Quentin, because he’d just walked past a Mason jar full of chopsticks in the kitchen, and because the tip of Quentin’s tongue was darting out the way it did when he was getting ready to do something courageous.

Kissing Quentin was like drowning in an ocean of want, but then again not drowning because you find you have gills to breathe. Floodgates open. Rip current warning. He’d floated on that swell of want, let it wash over him, heart hammering in his chest. How was it fair that Quentin, so sweetly handsome and adorably brave, was also a savant at kissing, or at whatever this was, because Eliot’s whole body was involved somehow. His face, his hands, the flat edges of his teeth, the sensitive skin of his neck all busily grazing and skimming Quentin’s live-wire body. They’d melted into one another like a couple of teenage squids, limbs twining everywhere on the mushy sofa.

When he’d finally picked up his head to catch his breath, to gather his wits, Eliot had said, “Oh. It’s like that, huh?”

Quentin had given him the lightest, easiest smile and said. “Yeah. It is.”

Eliot had taken him upstairs to the attic, needing to do something with all that quivering and those gasps and moans so close to what he’d imagined all these years, and he’d been right about all of it—Quentin fell to pieces so easily, like he didn’t even know how to hold back or why he would, and the first time he made Quentin come Quentin didn’t look away, he didn’t shut his eyes, and a new pathway lit up in Eliot’s brain, bright and golden.

And it was like that—sudden and easy, intense and easy—for the first two years. Their life was festive budget feasts from the farmer’s market Uglies bin, and mind-blowing sex every time they had the house to themselves and sometimes when they didn’t. It was stumbling into a side hustle selling plum and peach hand pies through the local bodega, and the shopkeeper slipping them Xeroxes of the Sunday crossword from the Times, which they couldn’t afford to buy. It was botching every damn clue ( _Emerson’s…five letters…alloy?_ ), but trying anyways, and staying up all night writing songs in the acoustically magic attic, and loud orgasms under a blanket on the back porch at dawn, scaring away stray cats. It was learning to be brave, Eliot telling Margo his ambitions for the band, making a demo; Quentin turning his undergrad thesis into essays, submitting to journals. Eliot letting his guard down with the rest of their friends, a little at a time. Quentin trying to keep a handle on his negative self-talk, his fleeting self-esteem twitches.

Eliot listened to Quentin speaking in fits and starts one night and thought: _Oh. He’s not nervous. He’s just trying to say something true, even if the words aren’t there. No one else thinks about the world quite the way he does._ And that was when he began to fall deeper in love, and to grow into a better version of himself in case he could make Quentin fall deeper in love with him, too.

This he confessed to Margo one stormy day as they watched romcoms, Eliot laying sideways on the couch with his head on her stomach. She’d said _I guess he’s taught you about the kind of person you want to be. And I think he also thinks you’re perfect, just as you are._ And he’d been secretly delighted, but had mock-lectured her about the no-no of combining the sentiments of Johnny Castle in _Dirty Dancing_ with those of Mark Darcy in _Bridget Jones’ Diary_.  

For the first time in his life, Eliot found he enjoyed being sober for sex. Like, really enjoyed it. He loved talking during. He loved being able to change things up in the middle if inspiration struck, or if Quentin said, soft and breathy, _what about—how about—this._ He loved remembering everything about it the next day.

One night, still panting, his head on Quentin’s sweat-sheened hairy thigh, he’d said, “Do you think it’s this good because we’re sober?”

Quentin had given him a dubious look. “I’ve pretty much only ever had sober sex. And none of it came close.” Then he’d pulled Eliot up to kiss him so tenderly it hurt. So maybe being sober wasn’t the secret ingredient, but Eliot had tried to stay sober more often, after that night. And then when he tried and failed, he began pretending he wasn’t trying.

For another year their life was intense and not so easy, and then intense and rough, because Eliot wasn’t in control of his drinking and didn’t know yet that he never would be in control of it unless he stopped completely.

As for how it ended: badly, and suddenly.

Quentin had been in the UK doing a six-week research fellowship, considering grad school, and Eliot had been playing small venues and then some bigger venues around New York with Margo.

Like a demented scientist, Eliot had started experimenting with ways to get himself to sleep on nights when the adrenaline was too much. And while he could at least say none of those ways involved any part of a stranger’s body, he wasn’t proud of what he was doing to his own body. And then there was both shame and adrenaline to deal with, which required more extreme measures, and before long he was rinsing his vomit-stained clothes in the bathtub most mornings before anyone noticed (everyone noticed), and eventually Margo was shoving her phone against his ear with Quentin’s voice on the other end.

Quentin. His beautiful, kind Quentin, who he’d been sending to voicemail for a week now.

“Eliot, I’m worried about you. You don’t have to keep living like this.”

“Margo should mind her own business.” He was careful not to slur his words, because the last thing he needed was the indignity of a cliché.

“It was a mistake to leave for so long. Listen, just—I’ll come home. I love you. I’m coming home.”

God, he hated that. He hated it because it _was_ a mistake. He couldn’t even be trusted to take care of himself, not even for a few weeks. He’d bitten down on his tongue until he drew blood, anything to keep from crying. “I don’t want anything. I don’t want you—”

Then he heard Quentin suck in a sharp breath, a sort of defeated noise he sometimes made. Eliot had meant to say _I don’t want you to see me like this_. But then: _Oh, this will work,_ he realized with a shock, choking back a sob. _He’ll believe you. Don’t say it unless you want it to work._

“I don’t want you. You’re . . . weak. And you should stay away. I don’t want you.” He’d gone numb after that. His ears stopped hearing, his vision went black.

And then, stupidly, he’d stuck to his guns. He’d started functioning again, at least on the surface, and had shut Quentin out. Quentin had given up quietly, or so it had seemed. Eliot can’t trust his memories from that era. From what he’s been able to reconstruct, it wasn’t quite that simple. Quentin had in fact made multiple efforts, and Eliot had scorned him every time; he’s been working on forgiving himself for that.

A few things he knows for sure: Quentin did come home, but went back to the UK. Stayed there. Got married. End of story.

#

Glasgow is grey underfoot, surprisingly clear blue skies above. On the way back from his meeting, Eliot passes a bookstore with a cat in the window and stops in to see if the cat wants to be pet. He picks out a used book about Scottish art nouveau for himself, and a volume of Robin Robertson poems for Margo. He bites his lip and shakes his head regretfully when the handsome shop clerk, clearly a decade younger than him and blushing furiously, makes a pass. Clerks and baristas used to flirt with him. More often, he was the one doing the flirting. But nowadays, once they recognize him, they only proposition him. Sometimes he says yes. He has a Non-Disclosure Agreement form on his phone. He misses flirting.

He buys a samosa and eats it while walking, thinking of hand pies, craving the caramel sweetness of baked peaches. He reminds himself to stay in the moment and enjoys the samosa. Savors it. Back at the hotel, he goes over the set list with Margo, does a video conference with Josh, who works on the advance team prepping for the rest of the tour, gets fitted for some wardrobe pieces. He slips the concierge some cash in exchange for thirty minutes alone in the hotel pool, and he swims laps naked. He didn’t pack trunks. He Facetimes with his therapist. He leans over the sink, debating shaving his four days of beard growth. It still looks tidy. He decides against shaving. He evaluates himself in the mirror: Eyes clear. Skin glowing. He feels as grounded as he’s going to get. Is he forgivable, he wonders?

And then it’s time for dinner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the way, I'm trying to have the story not hinge too much on the quality and nature of Eliot and Margo's music -- I like to leave that up the imagination -- but if you want food for thought I do have this [Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7mduSM6fGlwIEmcIMoBSca?si=wdtIE_wRSieiwxVJ4eDsZw) I've been listening to while writing . . .


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is basically one long conversation full of various factual revelations, mood shifts, and locations. Dialogue is hard, y’all! High fives and sympathetic nods to all the writers out there working on dialogue scenes. 
> 
> Eliot's epic heartbreak song, in my mind, is Translatlanticism by Death Cab for Cutie (which you might have guessed from the title) but feel free to substitute whatever works for you.

Walking down the street toward the restaurant where he’s agreed to meet Quentin, Eliot feels calm, confident, ready. But the universe has another idea. The person he can see waiting for him in the dimming evening light, recognizable fully a block away, is somehow exactly the man he remembers and more so, and also a shock, because here he is, flesh and blood. He still wears his hair long. It’s tied back tonight. He’s clean-shaven, wearing a well-made jacket and black jeans that fit. He’s lost his habit of twisting one leg around the other and leaning on a wall; he stands solid and poised, with his arms folded across his chest.

Eliot focuses on walking at a normal pace. He reminds himself about his definition of success, as per the discussion he just had with his therapist: First, see with his own two eyes that Quentin has built a happy life. Bear witness. Second, apologize. End of list.

As he gets closer, he sees the face of a fully grown man: years wiser, still heart-wrenchingly handsome. Quentin is smiling. Quentin is—

Wrapping his arms around Eliot. Tight and strong. Eliot then has to hold him there against his thrashing heart until he finishes blinking back tears and gets a grip. _I forgot he would smell this way_ , Eliot thinks.

When they stand apart again he laughs and claps Quentin on the shoulder. He forces himself to look at the plain band on Quentin’s ring finger.

“I can’t tell you how good it is to see you,” he says, because it’s a start.

“You, uh,” Quentin says, “You can tell me,” and then they both laugh, because of how impossible it all is.

A hostess seats them in a discreet corner, Eliot’s back to most of the room. The restaurant is quiet, with innocuous music playing beneath the sound of flatware clinking against plates and the murmur of conversation. It’s the kind of place where servers use crumb scrapers.

Quentin waves away the wine list, and Eliot rushes to insist that’s not necessary. “I’m not drinking, but you can. I don’t mind, really.”

“I can live without it,” Quentin says. He suggests a local soda— _you like ginger, if I remember_ —and Eliot feels his throat go thick.

“You really did it,” Quentin says. His eyes are raking over Eliot’s face. He presses his lips closed.

“I can live without it, too. Turns out it’s the only way I can live. It’s great not being dead.” He shakes his head at himself. “Glibness reflex. Side effect. It goes away.”

“I like the—” Quentin gestures around his own beard area. “You look fantastic. Whatever you’re doing suits you. Not that—I mean, staying sober is obviously not a vanity project, that wasn’t what I was trying to imply. I timed this comment all wrong.”

Eliot laughs and rests an elbow on the back of his chair. He recognizes this. This is a nervous talking thing Quentin does for the first few minutes of any conversation.

“This will sound like an underhanded compliment,” Quentin continues, “but I sorta thought the pictures must be Photoshopped, you know? I didn’t think you could get more handsome.”

Eliot blinks and bites the inside of his cheek. He thinks, but doesn’t say: And I can’t imagine any version of you that would be anything but beautiful. Quentin has taken this conversation into very confusing territory very quickly. He’s got to be unaware he’s doing it. “The pictures?”

“Magazines.” Quentin blushes. “Posters around campus. I didn’t . . . Google you or anything.”

“Those are definitely Photoshopped. But you’re very sweet.” Eliot folds his arms. “And the articles are mostly publicist-driven fictions, in case you’ve read them. Um—”

“That was too much, wasn’t it?” Quentin says. “I realized a few sentences ago I was saying things that are objectively true but that might not be the easiest for you to hear from me, considering . . . “  
  
“Our capital-letters Extreme Personal History? Yeah, it was a little much.”

“I could see it happening and I just kept talking.”

Eliot can’t help smiling. “With a side of hashtag Married Now. It’s okay.”

“I, uh . . .” Quentin touches his fingers to his ring.

A man approaches the table and Eliot composes a polite blank face. He’s about to deflect the man with his best fan-handling phrases when it becomes clear it’s Quentin the man wants to talk to. The nervous energy that was there a moment ago disappears; Quentin stands and shakes hands in a way that seems super adult. There’s a brief, jocular exchange—something about thanks for bringing cupcakes to the bake sale.

The man looks at Eliot and excuses himself— _sorry, I’m interrupting your date_ —and returns to his table. Eliot shakes his head and decides to focus on just one of the perplexing parts of that exchange. “Bake sale? University getting creative about funding?”

“Hah. No. That’s a fellow dad. Our kids go to the same school.”

Eliot leans forward, his brain and his ears not cooperating with one another. His mouth feels like sand. “A fellow . . . what, now? Your who?”

“Oh. I thought you knew.”

Eliot raises his eyebrows. “I didn’t Google _you_. Maybe I should have.”

“Rupert and Jane. I adopted them when, uh. When Poppy and I got married.”

Eliot feels a feeling he’s never felt before in his life. His whole body turns to liquid and spills out onto the floor, then reconstitutes itself into a new body that knows Quentin is a dad now. Quentin is a dad now. Quentin is a dad.

If someone had asked Eliot five minutes earlier what it might feel like, he would have guessed it would be like splitting his heart into thirds, like that dream where he’s made soup and he’s trying to dish it out into a bowl someone else has already filled. He knows now that the feeling is like your heart tripling in size. _Rupert and Jane._ He grips the side of the table. He sees their sodas and some bread have appeared.

“I—. _Q_. I had no idea. Who are they? I mean, what are they like?” He thinks, nonsensically, _do they look like you?_

Quentin is swiping this way and that on his phone. “Here,” he says, beaming, showing his screen. “Here they are. Rupert was six and Jane was four when I met Poppy. They’re eleven and nine now. They’re amazing. Jane is funny, and so smart, and Rupert is . . . he’s having a tough time right now, but he’s a sweetheart. He’s a gentle one. They’re the best things in my life.”

The children are beautiful. Eliot says so to Quentin, who doesn’t need to hear it but smiles graciously. Eliot’s thumb itches to swipe through more pictures, and he stops himself. He hands the phone back, takes a deep breath. This is what he wanted, after all. To know. To understand.

He steels himself. “Tell me about her. Poppy.”

Quentin looks away for a long moment. “She’s an incredible mom. Not super conventional, which is good, I think. A brilliant scientist. She’s funny and blunt. She, um. She’s been good for me. Good to me. And she’s always going to be my family. Just . . . not. Well.”

Eliot watches as Quentin twists his wedding band. It feels like there’s a thread tied from that ring to his gut, which is twisting in time. A knot of pain is unspooling into the ghost of hope, because he thinks Quentin is telling him his marriage is over. And another knot is forming, because Quentin, who deserves to never feel this brand of pain again, is definitely telling him his marriage is over.

“God, I should have brought a whole briefing document,” Quentin says. “Would’ve been a little easier.”

“You know I never learned how to read,” he says, to make Quentin laugh, and it works. Making Quentin laugh sends a dart of joy through him. He’d forgotten about that.

He puts his hand on top of Quentin’s, reaching across the table. He prays it comes across as nothing but care. A server who has been hovering, pen in hand, slinks away.

Quentin squeezes his fingers. “I still wear this for the kids. It’s a lot to get used to, for them.”

“Jesus. I guess it would be.” He lets go and sits back.

“We’ve been apart a year now. A little more than a year. It’s amicable, thank God.” He pauses. “It’s the right thing for her, honestly. And for them. All of us. Their bio dad isn’t in the picture, and I want them to know parents who are modeling a healthy, loving relationship. That might be Poppy, and it might be me, one day, but not Poppy and me together.”

“Do you want to talk about why?”

“Maybe.” Quentin picks up his menu, turns it face down. “I’m dumping a lot of information on you right now. I’m sure this isn’t what you expected to be discussing.”

“Well, in a way, it is,” he says. “It’s your life. I want to know.”

“I’ll tell you more about Poppy. It’ll be good to talk about it.”

“You can tell me as much or as little as you want to. If it’s easier, maybe you can tell me about your work first? Students, faculty lounge drama, who’s ahead in the House Cup? My comprehension of a professor’s life is based purely on Harry Potter movies, you understand.”

“I wish.” Quentin chuckles and rips off a crust of bread to chew. And then: “Were you always such a good listener?”

“No.”

Quentin puffs out a laugh, because it’s true.

“I had other good qualities, and still have many of them, but listening was not a particular strength. I’m still mending my ways,” Eliot says. “Speaking of which.”

Quentin looks at him like he’s been expecting this.

Eliot clears his throat and keeps looking Quentin in the eye. “Back when we, um. You were doing so, so much for me. You were doing more than I deserved. And I said things to you that weren’t true. On purpose, to hurt you, to drive you away. I was conscious and in control, at least in some of the instances I remember, and I did it anyways. I don’t have anything in my life I regret more than saying those things to you.”

Quentin sighs audibly. “I knew. I knew what you were doing, El.”

Eliot nods. “You’re smart like that. But that doesn’t mean I get a free pass.”

After a quiet moment, Quentin asks, “What’s the harm you think you did?”

“Besides running away from the love of my life?”

Quentin absorbs this. “You hurt yourself when you did that, and we’ll deal with that later. I mean besides that.”

Eliot twists his napkin in his lap. His palms are sweaty. “I let you believe you weren't enough. That it was you I didn't have faith in.”

“I think that’s probably the right answer. You did make me feel that way.” Quentin looks serious, a little sad, but not upset.

Eliot feels a strange sort of relief that Quentin doesn’t deny it, and a fresh surge of remorse.

“I was predisposed to feel that way,” Quentin continues.

“Which I knew.” His voice breaks. This. _This_ is the thing he can’t forgive himself for.

“You did know.” It isn’t an accusation, but more of an acknowledgement.

“I’m sorry, Quentin. I’m just—so sorry.” He’s finally said it. Said it and been heard. Quentin is looking at him with such gentleness.

“Um. You know what? Pause button,” Quentin says, swiveling his head around. “Do you want to get out of here? Take a walk? I don’t think we can have this conversation here. We need to eat—somewhere. I’m just jumping out of my skin a little.”

“Yeah. Me, too. Let’s do that.” They stand to go. He reaches into his wallet and pulls out the wrong currency. “Crap. I had some Scottish cash but I spent it.”

“I’ve got it.” Quentin leaves a pile of bills on the table for their sodas and for holding the table and mimes an apology to the waiter. They make the way past gawking diners and out onto the street.

#

The cool night air washes over him. At first they just walk in silence. The streets are narrow and curved, lined with shuttered shops interspersed with restaurants and bars whose patrons spill out onto the sidewalks. Eliot is struck by a sense memory of walking side by side with Quentin through the streets of Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Harlem. He adjusts his long strides to match Quentin’s pace.

When Quentin starts to speak, Eliot tips his head just so, angling his ear to hear better.

“This is a good bookstore,” Quentin says. “They have a sweet cat who sits in the window luring people in. A few of my students work there. Halfway decent grocer, but there's a better one further up. Oh, this is the cobbler where get my shoes repaired.”  
  
“Excuse me, did you say cobbler? Did you move to Scotland or to the 19th century?”  
  
Quentin laughs, and Eliot feels that sharp dart of pleasure again. “It's hard to find a good pair of shoes! Once I find a pair I like and break them in, I get them resoled. Mac takes care of me.”  
  
“You're making this up.” The small, locked-away part of his brain that was devoted to feeling jealous of Poppy now conjures images of a rugged, square-jawed leatherworker doting on Quentin. It’s dizzying. “A Scottish person with an old-timey job does not let himself be called Mac. Does he have eyes of azure blue and speak with a velvet brogue?”  
  
“I promise, that's what he likes to be called.” But Quentin is blushing. “He’s—not my type.”  
  
Eliot doesn’t know what to say. He keeps glancing at Quentin. His brain keeps feeding him questions that appear innocuous and neutral but that he will absolutely not ask. How does a single dad date? What’s it like to be Bi in Glasgow? What _is_ your type?  
  
“What about you?” Quentin says.

“We already know I’m your type.” He jostles Quentin playfully to show he’s only joking. Ha ha.

“No, I mean, what’s going on with you? I haven’t asked you much. I know the band is doing well.”

“The band is doing well. I only tour when I want to, which is kind of the thing you work toward. I’ve been doing some producing, a lot of writing. I keep semi-unintentionally flipping real estate because . . . ”

“No place feels like home?” Quentin says.

“No.” He thinks for a moment. “More like my recording studio is the place that feels like home, and I can move that anywhere. My studio and Margo. She doesn’t let me move her anywhere, but we usually have compatible taste.”

“I miss Margo.”

“She misses you, too. You’ll see her tomorrow night.”  
  
Quentin points out another shop as they walk past. “This coffee place has decent baked goods. There's a better one for just coffee around the corner, but the scones aren’t as good. Poppy's lab is just up the street, so this is typically where we have our family meeting and trade off the kids.”  
  
Eliot absorbs this. Separate living arrangements. “How does that usually go? Must be hard.” He mines his memory for conversations along these lines that he's had with his divorced friends.  
  
“Mostly, it's important that neither of us is distracted. The kids read a lot into body language in those moments. My own folks were divorced, you remember, and I know growing up I had these thoughts like if my mom was in a hurry, it was because she couldn't wait to be rid of me, and that feeling would stay with me, even if the reality was something more like, oh, the parking meter is about to expire.”  
  
“You're a sensitive dad. I think you must be a good dad.”  
  
Quentin looks up at him. He opens and closes his mouth, considering something. “I needed to be good at something.”  
  
“I didn't mean _only_ —”  
  
“Oh, I know. I’m thinking of . . . when I met Poppy. I guess I want you to understand the way I was feeling when I met her and what it meant to me to be in her life. How my life changed, actually. Even though she and I never shared a passionate connection, were never in love in that way, she gave me my self back.”  
  
_Never in love_ makes his heart leap, selfishly, just as _gave me my self back_ makes his heart break. “She let you be useful. She had faith in you.” Smart woman.  
  
Quentin nods. “At first we were just hooking up, and the fact that it was only physical was something relatively new for me. Different, you know.” Eliot nods carefully, because _different from you_ is what Quentin means. “It short-circuited my anxiety, and we were both having fun.”

“And then . . . I was a grad student, she was already a professor—she’s older than us, you know—in a different department, and she was doing an impressive job raising the kids on her own but she was just so appreciative of anything I did to help out. And it felt so good to be able to do something after feeling helpless for so long.”

Eliot realizes he’s slowed his pace to a crawl. He thinks of how spectacularly he fucked things up. But then he thinks about Quentin gaining a family, which clearly makes him happy, and he feels slightly less bad.

“She asked me if I’d thought about what it meant if the kids formed a long-term attachment to me, the responsibility, and I said yes. Then she really started letting me in, and one day Jane called me _Dad_ , and that was it for me.”

“So you got married.”

“We went to the courthouse and got married.” Quentin looks at the sky, not at Eliot. “In the early days, it reminded me a lot of our old house, in a good way. How hectic it always was. Everybody always making things work, flying by the seat of our pants. Things are less chaotic now that the kids are a little older. But I always kind of liked that energy.”

“I miss that, too,” Eliot says. “God, we were so poor.”

They both laugh. “But I never felt deprived,” Eliot says.

“No.” Quentin smiles fondly. Now he does look at Eliot. “Never.” Then his stomach growls, and they both laugh again.

Quentin stops walking, and they’re in front of a supermarket. “Before I suggest what I’m about to suggest, you should know it’s technically my night with the kids, but Poppy took them out to a play. She’s bringing them to my place in about two hours, at which point I need to be there alone. So no shenanigans, truly and honestly. But with all that being said, if you’ll let me, I would really like to cook for you.”

#

Inside the busy supermarket, Eliot follows Quentin around like a grateful urchin. He misses home cooked meals more than he misses flirting. He could cook for himself, in theory, but he never does. He marvels at the packaging of the items on the shelves, at the names of things. _HobNobs._ _Irn-Bru._ Another reason for his giddiness keeps trying to float to the surface, and he resists acknowledging it.

He doesn’t think he’s about to _seduce_ Quentin. Nothing like that. _No shenanigans_ means _no shenanigans_. But outlining a logistical rationale for _no shenanigans_ is not the same as shenanigans being outside of the universe of imaginable scenarios. He thinks he might find the courage to say a true thing to Quentin tonight. That’s all.  

A UK radio station (they’re all UK stations here, he reminds himself) is being piped into the grocery store, playing top hits. He recognizes a song he likes by a band that once opened for Sorrow and Sorrow. He's about to make a quip about how soothing BBC Radio announcers are when he hears a too-familiar set of notes and feels the opposite of soothed. 

 _Christ. Not now._ He groans. A horde of teenagers standing between him and the door complicates his plan to flee the store in a panic. Instead, he crouches down and pretends to read the labels of boxes of cereal on the bottom shelf. Quentin crouches next to him and tries to see what he finds so interesting about a box labeled Rainbow Bee Holes. Eliot avoids looking at Quentin as the announcer rattles off a predictable intro to the song.   
  
_By way of welcome to the 200,000 people arriving at Glastonbury by the planeload and trainload as we speak, we're now beginning five days of themed programming. Safe money says you won't hear this song when the band plays Glastonbury on Sunday, as they haven't played it live since Eliot Waugh's onstage meltdown five years ago, but we're playing it for you now. Anyone who's ever been heartbroken remembers exactly where they were when they heard this perfect song for the first time. I know I do. Enjoy. Here's Sorrow and Sorrow, with_ So Much Closer _._

"Oh," Quentin says. Then, redirecting: "Let's see. What are Rainbow Bee Holes made of? I’ve always been bee-curious. Niacinamide sounds scary, but it's a form of vitamin B, did you know that? And, yeah, mixed tocopherols are the tastiest. Red 40, so glad they came up with that. Those other 39 versions were the pits." Quentin's voice is not quite drowning out the music, but it pokes a hole in the bubble of tension between the two of them, and Eliot finds himself authentically laughing at the situation. 

"It's not that big of a deal," he says. "I’m not going to have a panic attack or anything. I just don't want to try to slink out of here and wind up starring in some kid's Instagram story. Or, with my luck, you’d get sucked in. Your students would recognize you and start internet stalking you, they’d find out we went to the same college. Then the jig would really be up.”

“It really would be. Easy, tiger.” Quentin pries the cereal box out of his hands. The cardboard is fairly crushed. 

He’s used to hearing his own voice on the radio, but this time it feels surreal. He shakes his head. “You know this song is about you, right?” 

Quentin makes a face at him. 

“Just checking.” It’s the long instrumental part in the middle. The long frenzy of desperate, pleading guitar.

“It’s beautiful, El.”

“I’ll never replicate it. The process entailed tearing my own beating heart out of my rib cage and using my blood for ink. I’m not doing that again.”

Quentin makes a pained smile. “Please don’t.” The guitar part is still going. Quentin grins. “This is a really long fucking song.” 

“Eight minutes. Half the reason it was so popular was because it gave radio deejays time to pee, take a smoke break, and microwave a Hot Pocket.”

“I doubt that’s the reason.”

“Does it bother you that I profited from something so personal and you didn’t even get a cut?”

“Does it bother _you_?”

“I’m framing this in joking terms because I literally can’t do it another way.” 

“Yes, I know that.” 

The teenagers near the door are now singing along with the repetitive chorus. The raw desperation of the chorus is the reason the song works—his defenseless, needy inner child trotted out for the world. These teenagers singing in unison make it sound like a triumphant anthem, somehow.

“When I wrote this song, I was practically in a coma. I had no idea about it being a breakout hit until it was too late. And then the album charted and I had to serve up my heart on a platter every fucking night during that tour.”

Quentin just nods, listening.

“When I wrote it, I thought only Margo and I would ever hear it. And maybe Todd, since he had to learn the keyboard part.” 

“Todd! How is Todd?”

“I’ll have to ask him and let you know.” 

“I don’t have any problem with it. If anything, it was comforting for me to hear.” 

“Really?” 

“Not that I liked the idea of you suffering. More that it made me feel less alone. Ironically. And there was something ceremonial about it. Like a funeral for our relationship.” 

Eliot can’t tear himself away from Quentin’s eyes. Here on the floor of the supermarket, crouching in a slipstream of supercooled meat locker air, he says, “I really loved you a lot.”

“I know. I really loved _you_ a lot.” Quentin’s breath catches, and he sighs. Then he does the thing he’s always done. He says the true thing, and it’s the same true thing Eliot is thinking. “I never really stopped.”

#

At Quentin’s apartment, which Quentin calls a _flat_ , they studiously avoid shenanigans. Eliot prowls the bookshelves and checks out the framed family portraits atop the upright piano while Quentin dices vegetables and simmers couscous. Miniature articles of clothing are strewn about, hanging on hooks and in little piles on the floor, and children’s games and craft supplies are tucked into corners. A calendar on the wall is crammed with appointments and lessons and custody schedule notes and sports activities, and he feels a silly thrill to see his own name scrawled across tomorrow night in Quentin’s handwriting.

Printouts of snapshots are fixed to the fridge with magnets, including some from a Pride parade that must have been a couple of years ago, judging by how much shorter Quentin’s hair is and the relative smallness of the children.

Eliot rolls up his sleeves and asks for tasks. He chops and dices alongside Quentin, their two pairs of hands side by side at the counter forming a coordinated assembly line. He’s very hungry. They nibble on pita and cheese. They eat their meal, when it’s finally ready, at the kitchen counter, sitting on stools, ravenous. They talk about their summer plans and the intricacies of Glasgow schools, and Eliot’s strategies for managing the tedium of a long tour, and Poppy’s upcoming sabbatical year, and the way Margo and Josh, of all people, have connected in recent weeks.

When they’re done, Eliot cleans the dishes and finally, with the clock ticking, rests his hip against the counter and folds his arms.

“What are my options, Quentin? How do I ask this?”

Quentin mirrors his posture, facing him, but without folding his arms. He answers the question with a question. “What do you want?”

Eliot stares at a spot on the granite counter and takes a measured breath. He threads the dish towel through the handle of the oven door. He looks Quentin in the eye.

“I want the mother of all do-overs, Q. I want to keep my promise about being gone before your kids come home. And after I finish four weeks on tour, I want to come back here. I want to earn the chance to meet them. I want to move my studio here and spend more time producing.” He wraps a hand around the back of Quentin’s neck, and he feels the same jolt of electricity that makes Quentin clench his jaw. “I want you to say yes to me. But I also want you to have a chance to think this through. Because this time, if you say yes, I plan to take you at your word.”

And then he does the hardest thing he’s ever done, with the exception of getting and staying sober, which is to kiss Quentin just once on the lips, to feel that softness and that breath and that angling of the chin his body knows so well, to soak up that scent of skin for the briefest instant. And then to stop.

“Goodnight, Q.”

He lets himself out. As he strides down the long hallway toward the lifts, he hears Quentin shout after him, “I’ll see you tomorrow night. Don’t shave that beard.” He grins from ear to ear, a giddy idiot, knowing no one can see him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter still to come. If you've ever had the experience of reconnecting with someone you knew intimately after a gap of many years, I hope this resonates. Or if you haven't had that experience, I still hope this makes you feel something! Thanks for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

Margo isn't in her suite at the hotel.

She isn't in his suite, either.

She isn't in the lounge introducing the bartenders to Korean soap operas over a vodka and Perrier.

She isn't dissecting Israeli foreign policy with the beauticians in the hotel spa.

She isn't on the roof practicing capoeira under the crescent moon.

She isn't anywhere Eliot remotely expects her to be, which in itself is the thing he most expects of her.

He finally resorts to texting her.

**where r u**

**_back already?_ **

**_kitchen_ **

**_women's world cup is on_ **

**stay there I’m coming to you**

He weaves through the empty hotel dining room and through the swinging kitchen doors to find Margo huddled around an iPad watching the match with the dishwashers and off-duty prep cooks. She’s dressed in a pristine off-white linen caftan and nibbling on a lamb kebab. Judging by the shouts and exchanges of cash and good-natured ribbing—Margo seems to be speaking both Arabic and Chinese, neither of which Eliot has mastered—a point of some kind has just been scored.

When Margo sees Eliot, she hops off her stool, washes her hands in the industrial steel sink, and makes her way over.

“I told myself if it went badly, you’d be back within an hour. I didn’t want to jinx you by telling you, but I had us booked for side-by-side massages just in case an emergency distraction was needed. I ended up having them do both of our massages just on me, which, honestly, I’m now thinking was one of my better ideas. Double the hands!”

“Well, you look positively radiant and insanely relaxed, which works in my favor. Come up to the roof with me.”

Once upstairs, Eliot drapes his hip-length velvet jacket over Margo’s shoulders and then folds his body around hers. He stands there with his chin on her head, arms around her, swaying and looking out over the gentle lights of the city. He wonders if she can feel his heart still thrumming like a motor in his chest.

“All right. I’ll bite. What are we looking at?”

“See that spire there? The small cathedral-looking thing?” He points. “Below the big cathedral. To the left of the park.”

“You mean that one there, with the yard and a big gate? I guess it is kinda small for a cathedral.” He tightens her arms around her and moves his chin to her shoulder. She bends her neck to try to see his face. “Eliot, what did you do?”

“It’s been converted from a small cathedral into a very large single-family home. I was thinking of carving off a guest flat for you, putting in a recording studio. An agent will let us in tomorrow to take a look.”

“I guess your date went well.”

“It wasn’t a date. But yes. Extremely well.”

“Your platonic meeting with your married ex went so well that you’re looking into moving across the ocean to be close to him.”

“Maybe it _was_ a date. I don’t know. Why label a thing? Also, he’s not married anymore. Or—it’s possible the legalities are still being sorted out. And it’s not like I can ask _him_ to move, since his work isn’t portable like mine is, and the kids are finally in a school they like.”

“The kids.”

“Rupert and Jane. Eleven and nine. He adopted them when he married Poppy.”

She turns to face him, still encircled by his arms. She stares at his face for a long moment. “How did you get a property agent to answer his phone so late at night?”

“That’s your question? I texted him my criteria and what I’m willing to pay.”

She considers this, then nods solemnly. “Yeah, that makes sense.” Then: “You’ll still keep your place in the West Village?”

“Of course. I’m not crazy.”

“Is it weird that I don’t think you’re crazy? Most of these details were not on my vision board for you, but I’m not mad.” She shakes her head and suddenly she’s blinking away tears. “Do you know how strong you are? I mean do you have even the slightest idea? I believe in you. I’m going to miss you, but I believe in you. And I want you to know I’m proud of you.”

“You know I love you.” He kisses the top of her head. “I’m not going to let too much time go by without seeing you. I meant it about making space for you. And don’t forget we’re about to spend four weeks together on a tour bus, so tell me again at the end of that if you’re still going to miss me or not.”

He stays there on the roof, perched in a weathered teak sling chair and wrapped in a blanket Margo has sent up to him, until dim, distant light softens the deep blue of the night sky. It's still an hour or two before the sun will fully breach the horizon. On long tours like this he cherishes staying awake all night and sleeping during the day. It isn't anything like what it was, the months and years he spent in dread of insomnia and loneliness, chasing oblivion by way of any substance on hand. These days, he luxuriates in the peace and quiet of the overnight hours. That will change, thinks. He imagines slotting into Quentin's day-to-day routine. Taking things slow, of course, but with a goal in mind. It's never a disruption to change _where_ he lives, but he has to be thoughtful about  _how_  he lives. 

He thinks about what he wants. He lets himself  _feel_  the want—tentatively at first, then with a full-body yearning that makes him ache. He doesn't hate that feeling anymore. He doesn't feel afraid of it.

#

He does sleep through much of the day, restoring his energy for the concert and another late night. Over an early afternoon bowl of room service porridge, his manners come back to him and he taps out a text.

**I had a really nice time last night. Thank you.**

**_Same_ **

**_That came out wrong. I mean likewise, and thanks, and I’m really really ducking happy you are here and you’re you and we’re talking and. Etc._ **

**_Fucking happy_ **

**_It’s been embarrassingly long since I got a text like that n I’m rusty_ **

**Not embarrassing, you’ve been married after all**

**We probably should have discussed this but you’ve dated since? Please say yes.**

**_I had my newly single phase. Mischief managed._ **

**_And u? Ur not dating matt bomer?_ **

**You did read those articles after all. I knew it. No he’s darling but that’s fake news.**

**_I only said I didn’t google you. I can’t not read gossip mags at the dentist._ **

**Ask me anything. Now or whenever.**

**_I will. Gotta go see you soon_ **

**_X_ **

**_(?)_ **

**X (!)**

He smiles and puts his phone away.

In between press interviews via videoconference and sound check at the venue, he takes Margo to meet the property agent and walk through the vacant cathedral conversation. The top-floor bedroom has a vaulted ceiling that reminds them both of the attic they once shared.

“Is this your next studio?” she says. She claps her hands once, testing the acoustics. The reverberation goes on forever, clean and perfect, and the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. “Oh. It’s super boomy. Do you want that?”

“Maybe some of the time. I think I’ll live here. Put the studio on the ground floor.”

He still feels surprised, sometimes, to be asked what he wants, to be taken seriously when he answers. He has to remind himself, sometimes, to _be_ serious. He thinks back to the interview he just did. The journalist had asked him: _What’s harder—knowing what you need and not getting it, or not knowing what you need?_ Not knowing is worse, of course. He’s gotten variations on this question for years. When you don’t know, you grasp for any old thing, to disastrous effect. But this time he’d said: _Can I choose a third answer? It’s knowing what you need and not saying it. It’s okay to admit what you need. You can let the need just exist. It doesn’t make you incomplete if you voice a need and it doesn’t get filled._ A light bulb had lit up in his brain then.Something he hadn’t really understood until that moment.

He shakes the property agent’s hand, and they have an agreement.

Afterward, he lets Margo take the hired car alone and says he prefers to walk back. He strolls the city streets alone, explores a leafy green park. He replenishes his cash from an ATM and proceeds to give half of it away to buskers in exchange for their earnest self-marketed CDs. He watches a fairly impressive accordion and guitar duo for a while, then chats with them while they take a smoke break. Asks after their luck, what the good venues are in town. He doesn’t know that they recognize them until he makes a move to leave and they say shyly: _Wee gig tonight innit?_ _Secret, like?_ He tells them where. It’s one of the places they mentioned.

#

The show begins like any other, except they’re so close together on this tiny stage, just their acoustic instruments and Margo’s simplest kit. Except the venue only holds about a hundred people, and it’s packed to the gills. Except that Quentin is here. Quentin is here with his freshly clean-shaven face and his hair tied back and his adorable impish smile. He’s wearing a Yes t-shirt, which is a band Eliot hates but a word he loves, especially when it comes from Quentin, and Eliot shakes his head at Quentin to let him know he’s in a lot of trouble while also smiling to let him know he adores this nerdiest of nerdy message t-shirts in spite of himself. He thinks about keeping the shirt later, wearing it inside out under his other clothes. He thinks about taking it off of Quentin.

The other thing he’s thinking of comes to a head near the end of the sweaty, rowdy, stripped-down and hard-driving show. He turns and gives Margo the signal that he’s changing the set list on the fly, which is more like a flailing hand motion and not an established signal since this has never happened before. She rests her drumsticks and waits, dripping sweat.

“I need to change the tuning for this one,” he tells the crowd. “Bear with me.”

He holds his guitar up to his ear so he can hear the notes above the din as he adjusts. He catches Margo’s eye, asking permission, and she sees exactly what he is doing and the look she gives him says _duh_. It’s like titanium daggers of confidence in his heart. She has her snare brushes ready to go, and her wood block.

Todd plays a single note on the keyboard, a tuning assist, and a hush falls over the crowd, because it’s _that_ sound. And Eliot has not played this song live since the first tour. Not for five years. And never unplugged, never in an intimate space like this. The chats and subreddits and blogs are going to implode over this. A superfan in the back howls. Someone shouts _love you, man_.

He faces forward again. A few people have their phones out, recording. He doesn’t care. He finds Q, front and center, and feels anchored. “This is the song that changed everything for Sorrow and Sorrow. It made us famous and rich. It brought us places like this and let us meet all of you. And yet, for a long time, I told myself I would trade it all for a world where I didn’t hurt like this. But I’m learning . . . the hurt points a way forward. And that’s a gift. If anyone out there is going through something, please be patient with yourselves. But never stop asking for what you need. And never stop listening to that voice that’s asking.”

He looks at his hands on the guitar strings and plays. He looks at Margo and at Todd. He looks at Quentin in the audience. He knows now that the person he’s screaming for so full of need in this song isn’t Quentin, it’s himself. It’s the person he thought was lost forever. He can hear it in his own voice now, the change. He pours all his longing into the song, raw and bare, because he trusts himself to listen now. When the crowd joins in, belting the chorus, filling the small club with sound, he signals for the instruments to drop away and lets the vibrations of their voices wash over him like a baptism.

#

The band plays three encores there in the tiny, crowded space, and it feels less like a concert in front of strangers and more like losing track of time making art, making joy with his chosen family. Then there are fans waiting to thank him and put their arms around him, young people and queer kids with that hungry energy that comes from surviving on ramen and peanut butter and pure steely nerve because it means making space for who and what they love, eyes shining and fierce, and he wants to tell them they’re going to make it through, that they are enough, and then he does tell them exactly that.

And then he looks down and finds Quentin’s fingers woven in his, and he’s leading him through the back hallways and out the door and down the alleyway toward where a car is waiting, and then they are in the elevator, hands wandering, and then alone together in his suite.

He hears the latch click into place.

He closes the last remaining pocket of air between them, presses Quentin against the door, both of their bodies alive and humming.

“Does this this mean . . . do you want to, you know.” Eliot whispers, his voice catching.

“Yeah,” Quentin says. “All of it. We should try.”

His hands are in Quentin’s hair, touching the skin of his face, relearning the contours. His hands are trembling. His brain is gridlock, flooded with every memory at once of the things they used to do together, what Quentin likes, what feels good, what _he_ likes. All the ways he’s fantasized about showing Quentin what’s in his heart. Every apology, every promise. He closes his eyes and presses his forehead to Quentin’s, laughing softly at how overwhelmed he feels. He can still feel the pounding beat of Margo’s drums in his veins. He rests hands on shoulders. He feels the collar of Q’s t-shirt. The soft fabric.

“I don’t know where to start.”

He feels another pair of hands cover his own, warm and strong.

“Okay. Hey. It’s just you and me.”

He nods.

“It’s happening to me, too. It’s a lot to remember. Just be here with me, okay?”

He holds Quentin’s head between his two hands and looks at him. That soft, strong mouth that has known every inch of his body. Those eyes that see right through him. It comes back to him easily then. It’s in his bones, how to love this man, how to show him. It’s in his blood.

He lets his mouth go—gentle and slow at first, the shock of sensation flooding him, then sure and eager, drawn into a minor frenzy by the way Quentin melts and surges beneath him.

Quentin breaks the kiss, gasping. “It’s been a while since I—uh. God, you’re strong.” His mouth is red and chafed from Eliot’s beard. Then he’s pulling Eliot close again, clutching the fabric of his shirt, hands sliding, lips and teeth answering strength with strength.

Eliot hums and steers them toward the—no. Not the bed. The couch. He sinks into the buoyant saltwater ocean of kissing Quentin like this. He pulls him down, feeling the weight of his body.

Through it all, he can feel a buzzing under his skin—and in the back of his mind, a dull alarm sounds, quiet but persistent. He pulls away, groaning, and waits for his galloping heart to calm. He sits up again slowly and strokes Quentin’s neck with his hand. Quentin looks dazed, a little dizzy, and so, so hot like this. Eliot almost loses his nerve.

“I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but. Hah. I have to ask you something. Or tell you something. Both.”

“What is it?” Quentin works a hand up inside Eliot’s shirt, making him hiss. “You better not be apologizing for how sweaty you are. It’s not like I don’t know what you smell like.”

That makes Eliot’s vision go white for an instant. He angles his torso closer but keeps talking. “That’s—ah. No. The things is. That show was on the upper register of adrenaline for me. I—seeing you, playing that song. The energy of the crowd.”

“Yeah. It was pretty incredible.”

He kisses Quentin’s jaw, then his cheekbone. “It was a little more than I was expecting. And it all felt good, but . . . it isn’t a smart idea for me to follow that sort of adrenaline rush immediately with another adrenaline rush. My body gets its wires crossed and I don’t sleep for a full day and it’s a whole thing. It’s—I’m not worried I’m going to drink, but I try to avoid even triggering the urge. Okay?”

Eliot sees the wheels turning behind Quentin’s eyes.

“I’m so excited to be with you,” Eliot says, “and I don’t want to stop touching you for even a minute, but do you mind if we . . . well. Is it okay if we table the idea of sex for a bit? Is that terrible?”

“Oh.” Quentin looks fascinated more than anything. His eyes gleam with emotion, but Eliot doesn’t think it’s sadness, and that’s a relief.  

He rakes his hands through Quentin’s hair and feels him lean into the touch. “I want you. I want you so much. But my gut is telling me to ride out this adrenaline roller coaster first. Keep it separate.”

Quentin makes a flat, soft smile and brings his hands up to stroke Eliot’s hair back from his face.

Eliot takes one of those hands and places it over his heart, where he knows his pulse is racing just a little too fast. “Feel that?”

Quentin and quirks his lips up and nods.

“This is mostly you. But it’s not all you.”

“I want it to be.”

“Exactly,” he says, feeling a thud that almost breaks his will. “It’s been seven years since I had sex with the smoke show love of my life.”

Quentin tries to hide the way this makes him grin, and Eliot can’t resist.

“That’s you, by the way.”

“I got that.”

Eliot draws him in for a slow, heady kiss. “And I know it’s going to be spectacular.”

“You have to know what an insane turn-on it is to see you take good care of yourself,” Quentin says. “But I think I can keep it together, yeah.”

“I promise you, me taking care of myself correlates to fucking you as often and as thoroughly as you’ll let me—when I’m unwound, back at my normal baseline.”

“About that . . . when you say you don’t want to rush . . . are you talking about weeks, or?”

“Oh, god no. I need a few hours of calm. Can you stay the night? We could take a bath. Spend time talking and touching. I’m not embarrassed to admit I’ve literally fantasized about falling asleep in your arms. And then in the morning we can fuck each other brainless, if that works for you?”

“I can get on board with that.”

#

They almost overflow the bath when they both get in. Quentin says _Eureka_ , and Eliot remembers him saying this before, years ago, in another much dingier, smaller bath. He soaps Quentin’s back and his chest, living dangerously, trying not to tease. It feels good to get used to the fact of Quentin’s body. He knows his own body is stronger and healthier than it ever was, and he can see Quentin noticing. He submits to a head massage that feels amazing. He feels the vinegar buzz of the concert high leeching out of his body ever so slowly. Toweled off and naked in the big bed, he does drift off to a deep and sound sleep with Quentin wrapped around him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know why my brain insisted on having Eliot reverse-seduce Quentin into not having sex (for a brief time), but as you can see, that happened. Thanks for reading and for sharing your thoughts!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To anyone who has read this before, sorry for any false alarm -- I felt compelled to make an expanded, director's cut version of the last chapter and split it into two so this is not *really* a new chapter. It was nagging at me that I shortchanged their special reunion moment. (Shrugs).

Hours later, Eliot wakes gradually, not recalling immediately where he is, not knowing what’s a dream and what isn’t. In either case, his head is clear, and that’s the first thing that strikes him. He still marvels at it. That’s been true for about four years and a month of these past four years, two months, one week, and six days—the whole time, that is, minus the detox phase. The dreamlike blurriness he feels upon waking is nothing like the angry cloud of a hangover. It’s especially pleasant this morning, with this weight on his chest, this heat of breath on his neck. He brings his arms up experimentally and feels them close around something— _someone_ —solid and real. Good and true. Not a dream.

 _God, he’s still asleep,_ Eliot thinks. He keeps the embrace of his arms gentle, lets himself feel the rise and fall of Q’s breaths, the way his chest expands in sync with Eliot’s own. His body remembers just how to do it. It’s a thing he used to revel in on rare mornings when Q slept longer than he did—the way Q craved closeness, the unabashed way he craved enough for the both of them.

He recalls a discussion, early on, when Quentin explained that to sleep with his head on Eliot’s shoulder gave him a crick in his neck. There may have been a diagram, some notes about angles of repose and geometry and the differential between gravity and traction. Eliot had nodded, resigning himself to something like side-by-side shoulder-to-shoulder skin contact, only to discover Q had something else in mind: Eliot was to be wholly blanketed by Quentin’s torso, thigh, and arm. Night after night, Q melted into him, his head, neck, and shoulders supported comfortably on Eliot’s broad chest, his knee hiked up around Eliot’s hip. He had his own personal squid. And he liked it. He got to be the one to say: _Okay. Anything for you._ All the while thinking: _Please never stop asking._

He tightens his arms around Quentin now, starts stroking the firm muscles of his back. Here in the quiet and dark it dawns on him: _How did I not, actually, lose this forever?_ _And how did I actually come so close to losing this forever—this, of all things? This?_ His own breath stutters in his chest and a muted sob bursts from his throat. Q stirs in that instinctual way a parent does, not even fully conscious, comforting him with murmurs.

Eliot strokes his hands through Quentin’s hair, raking it back away from his face. This does the job of rousing him all the way. “Q,” he says, “I need you.” He feels Quentin shift his weight, feels him blink his eyelashes against his neck. “I want you so much,” he whispers. “Don’t make me wait, please.”

Those are Quentin’s lips against his neck now, traveling with intention upward toward his jaw, drawing groans out of him. Q does a thing he’s always liked to do, which is frame Eliot’s head with his forearms and float above, kissing him gently, insistently, all over his face. His hair falls down and brushes against Eliot’s skin.

The blackout curtains are parted just enough to let in ambient morning light. Eliot fumbles for a switch on the headboard that opens the curtains further, because he wants to see this face hovering above his, these gentle eye crinkles and cheekbones splotched with pink.

“Hi,” he says. He weaves his hands up to hold Q’s hair back from his face. Holding Q’s head in his hands like this, more memories flood back to him, and he guides Q until all of a sudden they are kissing like the longtime lovers they used to be and maybe are again. It’s the sort of kissing that’s mostly listening and breathing, and lips and stubbled skin and strong hands put to use waking up every last nerve ending, and he’s using all his best stuff at once.

“You are the least lazy kisser I’ve ever known,” Q says.

He smiles into Q’s mouth, so pleased he might be blushing. “And you’re the least subtle with motivational comments.”

Quentin gets his knees under him, straddling Eliot, and grinds against him with purpose. “Eh. Subtlety is overrated.”

“True.” He sighs and says without thinking, “You’re the only person I’ve ever kissed this way,” and realizes maybe at the same time Quentin does that what he means is _You’re the only person I’ve ever loved this way._ He feels Quentin shudder everywhere their bodies are connected, and he groans and says, “Speaking of unsubtle.”

“Mmhm.” Quentin is hard and leaking against Eliot’s abdomen.

Eliot reaches to take Quentin in his hand, his senses blazing again when Quentin’s breath catches, when Quentin’s teeth clamp gently against his collarbone. He rolls his hips and bucks up against where Quentin is seated, seeking more contact, more, always more. It would be so easy to—“Do you want to come like this?”

“Oh, hell no. Get inside me.”

“Thank god,” he laughs. He bites his lip and says, “I’m—I’m gonna use a condom, okay? Until I can be sure for you.”

Quentin lifts his head up and looks him in the eye, brave and frank. He wants the truth. He’s always wanted that, and today it makes Eliot feel more seen than exposed. “Yeah. That’s okay.”

He reaches for his jeans on the floor and for lube from the bedside drawer then feels Quentin’s hand stroking his neck as their bodies maneuver. “I’m gonna make it good. I’m gonna make it so good.”

“I know. I know you are.”

Quentin tells him exactly what he wants and that’s everything he wants, too—to work Quentin to the brink with his fingers and then his mouth and then his fingers again, flipping him onto his back and onto his stomach, positioning himself above and then underneath and then above again, working Quentin back to the brink again with his cock.

When they fit themselves together Eliot wonders how he lived without this. Then he resolves to never think such a thing again, because he isn’t living without it now. He tries to be careful this first time, close to being overwhelmed in every moment. _Slow down_ , he hears himself whisper into Quentin’s skin. Until he finds he can’t be careful, every movement making his senses explode into fireworks. He shudders uncontrollably, sweat splashing down, thighs straining, his hand working in firm strokes around Quentin who is gasping below him, mouth slack, eyes open, holding his gaze. Those are Quentin’s fingers in his mouth, Quentin’s fingers digging into the flesh of his back. Somebody’s making a lot of noise, hoarse and hot, and it’s probably him. _Don’t try to wait for me,_ Quentin says, and— _oh, god_ —he doesn’t, how can he, but Quentin is right there with him, a spurting human mess, the most beautiful mess he’s ever seen.

Afterward, he holds Quentin’s sweat-slick body in his own sweat-slick arms and catches his breath.

Quentin traces the contours of his shoulders. “Do you remember the first time you kissed me?” he says.

He goes almost still and pulls away, looking at Quentin. “Do I remember?”

“I just thought—”

“Q, I jerked off thinking about it yesterday.”

“You jerk off thinking about kissing me?”

“Not _all_ the time,” he says. He holds Quentin closer, feeling Quentin’s laughter in his own rib cage. “And it’s more of a highlights compilation, if you really want to know. But you are a very good kisser. And that first time, God.” He kisses Quentin gently now, tenderly, to show he remembers. “I remember feeling how much you wanted it. And—how good it felt to be wanted.”

“That’s what I remember, too. That and lying to you about the chopsticks. I thought I was so smooth.”

“Oh, Q. Almost 100 percent of being smooth is thinking you’re smooth.” He drags his fingers through Quentin’s hair. “Do you bring it up because you’re glad I have a fresh memory to bring with me on tour?” He can’t help biting Quentin’s shoulder.

“You do have that. Very fresh. Very memorable.”

“It’s just four weeks, it’ll be over before you know it. But—I sense there’s a but?”

“ _But_. I bring it up because nothing will ever be that easy again for me. Or for you, I think.”

“Mm.” This is a serious discussion, so he stops biting.

“Not even with chemistry that melts eyelids.” That makes him want to bite again, but he holds back.

“What gives me hope is that you did the hard thing last night.”

“When I cockblocked myself? That hard thing?”

“You never would have done that before.”

“It is hard. Harder than you might think.”

Quentin twists around to face him. “We should stop saying _hard_. And _but_ and _cock._ We’ve both grown up some, but come on.”

“I’m coming,” Eliot says, his lips on Quentin’s. “I’m here.”


End file.
